On Sunday, White Sox manager was quoted as saying about his first baseman, Paul Konerko that “Paul Konerko will be in the Hall of Fame”. That got me to thinking. Is Konerko really a Hall of Fame-type player? He’s been flying under the radar for years as a solid hand at first base, and I’ve never really thought about him as the kind of guy who would go into the Hall of Fame. Upon further research…I think I’m right.
At the start of this season, Konerko was 35. After Sunday’s game, his career line is .282/.357/.501. That’s not a bad line, good for a 121 OPS+ (meaning that over his career, Konerko has posted an OPS 21% higher than the league average. The big selling point on Konerko is his 381 career homers. He’s only 119 away from the (former?) magic number of 500. Assume he gets to 400 by the end of the year. That would put him 100 homers away entering his age 36 season. He averaged 29 homers a year from 2004-2010, his age 28-34 seasons. Assume Konerko’s average output decreases by 25% over the tail end of his career. That would give him 21 homers a season, and he’d need to play five years to get to 500.
But is 500 homers really enough for Konerko? Looking at all active players with 350 homers, only Andruw Jones has a lower OPS than Konerko’s career mark of .858. It’s pretty damning for Konerko’s case that *everyone* has a higher career OPS than him with that many homers. He would be the absolute lowest barometer to get into the Hall based solely on homer count.
Further exacerbating the point is that Konerko is a first baseman. First basemen are supposed to be power hitting monsters. Since 2004, the year where Konerko’s power surge began, his .890 OPS ranks ninth…among all first basemen. He’s not the best first baseman in the majors, he’s not the best first baseman in his league, and hell, he’s not even the best first baseman in his own division after the arrival of Miguel Cabrera to Detroit in 2008. Hell, it could be argued that he wasn’t the best first baseman in CHICAGO, with Derrek Lee posting a .889 OPS during those years, spent mainly with the Cubs.
I hate to break it to Ozzie Guillen, because I’m afraid he would launch an expletive laden, barely readble Twitter rampage against me, but his first baseman isn’t a Hall of Famer. He’s not even close to being a Hall of Famer. He’s a damn good player. But as the old adage goes, this isn’t the Hall of Very Good. It’s the Hall of Fame. And twenty years from now, only White Sox fans will really remember Paul Konerko.
